Touch
by my calico
Summary: The first time he touches her, the first time she asks him to, the first time he holds her, and the first time she tells him not to.


_When we met, I was on my back  
__I swear we spent most afternoons somewhere in the act  
__We were part of something ours and ours alone  
__Anywhere was home, we're almost here again  
__We're almost here again, we're almost here again  
__Right here, right now_

**_After The Last Midtown Show by The Academy Is…_**

* * *

The first time Beck touches her is almost three years ago, and he doesn't even notice he's doing it.

They've gone out once, for coffee at Jet Brew (which they both love, and they have since refused to drink coffee from anywhere else), but Jade refuses to acknowledge it ever happened. He's thankful, at least, that she agrees to a bit of a compromise and doesn't tell him to go away the minute he appears next to her. They're _friends, _he ventures to think, although rather tenuously. It's enough for now. He already knows that that's far less than what he wants to be to her, but all good things take some time. He's a patient person. He can take it.

Just like he can take the way that Jade seems to take offense at everything – like the way today's too _sunny, _the people in the hallway are too loud, and her locker keeps making that awful creaking sound and it makes her want to rip it off its hinges. He doesn't even know how the argument – a prelude to the ones they'll have when they finally get together – begins. It's a trivial one; _that much, _he knows. It's about something so mundane he doesn't even realize it's getting out of hand until Jade looks at him angrily, the way she did that first day they met when he asked her out for coffee.

"Hey," he says, "I don't want to fight." It's a reflex when he puts his hand on her arm to try to calm her down. It's a reflex, as well, when Jade flinches and jerks her arm away from his touch, an alarmed expression in her blue eyes. His brow furrows at that, but his brown eyes soften as he says, "Whoa. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to." He apologizes, but he has no idea what for. He just _knows _he doesn't want her to shrink from his touch, ever.

She looks away. "Sorry, force of habit," she mumbles, "I don't like being _touched, _okay?"

"Okay," he says resignedly as he lifts his arms in a gesture of surrender. He slips his hands into his pockets, trying to appear as unthreatening as possible to her. Beck wonders _why _she doesn't like being touched, but he doesn't ask. He knows, from the little time he's spent with her, that whatever she _offers _him is more than enough. It's more than what anyone else ever sees, and he's thankful for that, at the very least.

There's a flicker of an apologetic smile on her face before she turns away from him. It's the closest to an apology he'll get, but it's more of an "I can't help it," than an "I'll try to change." He takes it anyway, because he knows it's the best he'll get.

The first time she asks him to touch her is several months later.

It's been a mere two weeks since they became _official. _They're watching Edward Scissorhands for the fourth time (together, anyway; Jade already knows it by heart, and Beck suspects she's seen it at least a hundred times). It's the afternoon, but the shades are drawn and the lights are off. He's sitting there at the foot of his bed next to her, her pale face intent on the screen and illuminated only by the movie's eerie bluish-white lighting. He can't take his eyes off her.

She notices eventually, and her little smirk turns into one of those genuine, secret smiles she gives to only him. Slowly, quietly, she edges in closer to him, until they're less than an inch apart. She rests her head on his shoulder and drops her gaze from the screen. His eyes follow hers. They both look at the small gap between their hands on the carpet. They're _so close, _he thinks. Jade looks up at him, with a small smile and a raised eyebrow, telling him it's all right.

Beck cannot contain the smile that forms on his face. Tentatively, shakily, he reaches out for her hand and takes it in his. Their fingers intertwine easily, naturally. He can hear his heart pounding in his ears like it never has before, and he wonders, _"Can she hear it?" _but she doesn't move, so he hope it means she can't.

"Kiss me," she says.

His breath catches in his throat in disbelief. "—What?"

She looks up at him then, the smirk back on her perfect lips. He leans in hesitantly, unsure of what he's doing. What he knows is he _wants _to. He's been _waiting _for this. His lips brush hers for the first time, feather-light, and he pulls away, thinking that that was _more _than he deserved. Almost as quickly, she leans in again, taking him by surprise as she deepens the kiss. She wants this too, he realizes finally as her hands make their way to his arms, to the back of his neck, to his hair.

It's a kiss full of want and need and desire, awkward in its newness but so _right _at the same time. They knock over the half-finished bowl of popcorn, and Jade even forgets to cry when Edward confesses he can't hold Kim, for fear of hurting her when he does.

The first time he holds her is a year later.

He wishes he can do better than a few candles in his RV to make it special, but Jade hates flowers and they can't afford a hotel room. They have dinner and see a movie, neither of which they pay much attention to. It's not that dinner is terrible, or that the movie is boring. There's a slight anxiety in the air mingled with anticipation, and the combination is electric. They're quiet on the way back to his RV. When they finally get in, a silence settles between them. It whispers the question: "What now?"

She takes the first step towards him, and he closes the distance between them as he captures her lips in a kiss. They let out low, breathless laughs as they fumble with each other's buttons. Their hands are on each other, uncertain but eager. Somehow they make it to the edge of Beck's bed and his knees give way as he falls backwards onto it, Jade falling on top of him. She chuckles at their clumsiness, but he can't bring himself to. His eyes are fixed on her, her brown hair tumbling down her shoulders in perfect disarray, and her blue eyes glinting with warmth.

She's never been more beautiful to him than in that moment.

The smile disappears from her face, seeing the look in his eyes. He props himself up on his elbows as he cups her cheek in his hand. She leans into it contentedly, and he melts. This is a side of her no one else sees, and a side of her he prays no one else will see. That she trusts him enough to be this close to her utterly destroys him. That she's let down her defenses so much to let him in makes him want to do _everything in his power _to make sure he deserves this.

He kisses her then, and no words are spoken that night.

The first time someone notices is a week later.

It's been going on for longer than this: the arms-around-the-shoulders, the handholding, the kissing-in-front-of-the-lockers. It comes so easily to them now, as if it were never a problem. Maybe it wasn't; all that seems too long ago now to cross their minds. They're wrapped up in each other once again when someone says something that draws their attention away.

"You guys are really… touchy, aren't you?" Tori asks them.

That's not the word she _means, _Jade's quick to correct her as she launches into why you shouldn't make words mean what they don't. Beck knows what she means, though. He does not know _when _it happened exactly. He's addicted to her, to her skin and her lips and her eyes and he knows that he can never leave her even if he tries. It just feels _right _and that's the only way he knows how to explain the feeling of his arm snaking around her shoulders and his nuzzling at her neck as he tells her, "Let it go, Jade."

She does, and both he and Tori are thankful for the effect he has on her.

The first time she tells him not to touch her is another year later.

_We're acting, _he has to remind himself. It's been a short few weeks since they broke up, since she counted for him to follow her out the door and he didn't, and some days he forgets it happened at all. Like the day that Sikowitz hands them the box to pick their roles out of, putting them in a play together. It doesn't feel as awkward as Andre seems to think it would be. It just feels so natural to have her _here,_to have her stand next to him. They're on a stage acting out a scene in front of Sikowitz, and he has to repeat _"you're __her son, you're her son" _in his head over and over for him to stay in character. It usually isn't this hard, but it's only been a few weeks, and he knows it'll take much longer than that to start forgetting.

She's standing right next to him and he's cowering behind her one moment, but the next moment his hands reach out for her instinctively, naturally. It's a reflex as he grabs the little yellow apron she's wearing for the scene. He doesn't know how to feel when she takes his hands and moves them away as she says, "Don't touch Mommy."

It wrecks him.

_Don't touch me. _It's simple, so simple, but he can't wrap his mind around it. He doesn't want to need her anymore, and he knows the feeling is mutual. But what he _wants _and what he _needs _are two entirely different things, and knowing he can't have her near him anymore, knowing that she won't _let him _near her anymore, makes him regret, not for the first time, all that he's given up.

**Author's Note: **I'm pretty sure this might be my last oneshot for a while; there's only so much angst you can drown the fandom in before it's going to start sounding repetitive, and as much as I love making Jade and Beck suffer, I'm planning on downloading season one and two so that I could watch them over and maybe get some ideas for fluff. Incidentally, I hadn't planned to make this angsty at all, but I couldn't just leave it without addressing the "don't touch mommy" scene from Tori and Jade's Playdate, Thanks again to xXFireRoseXx, who managed to catch some pretty embarrassing mistakes this time around. She's awesome.

**Disclaimer: **I own nothing and if I owned The Academy Is…, they would never have broken up ok.


End file.
